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how it all begins

ARS ELECTRONICA 2011

Android-Human Theater “Sayonara”(Good-bye)

Neuer Dom/Mariendom

Hiroshi Ishiguro (JP), one of the crowdpleasers as Featured Artist of last year’s Ars Electronica, has been working on of the oldest dreams of humanity for quite a long time, namely the dream of recreating yourself as a machine. By now he has managed to built an android which is next to indistinguishable from himself. With his creation he has come close to his goal of human and android interacting with each other on the same level.

Hiroshi Ishigoro, credit: Tsukasa Aoki

Sayonara, credit: Tatsuo Nambu / Aichi Triennale 2010

Exactly this level of interaction makes up the narratical and philosophical tension of the amazing android-theatre Sayonara, which has been written for two actors by Ishiguro together with Oriza Hirata (JP), one of them being human, the other one an android. It is not told who is who, a puzzle to be solved by the audience. A great good-bye is in the center of Sayonara: The master who feels his death coming listens to poems about journeys and good-byes, read by his student. The play is about 20 minutes long and is in Japanese, English and German.